Study Finds Hospital Infections Lead to 50,000 Deaths a Year

A study found that approximately 48,000 patients die every year from pneumonia or blood poisoning they picked up while in the hospital. In fact, 1.7 million healthcare-associated infections are diagnosed each year, according to researchers who participated in the study. The study, conducted by the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy, also found that hospital-acquired illnesses lead to 2.3 million more patient days in the hospital at a cost of $8.1 billion.

Ramanan Laxminarayan of Resources for the Future, the organization that sponsored the study, said that many hospital patients’ conditions could have been avoided if there were better infection control at the hospitals.

Researchers found that, after analyzing discharge records of nearly 69 million patients who stayed at hospitals between 1998 and 2006, patients who got sepsis (a type of blood infection) after surgery stayed on average 11 days longer in the hospital, which equates to about $32,900 in additional medical costs. Patients who caught pneumonia in the hospital stayed an average of two weeks longer, at a cost of $46,400.

The underlying issue here, says one researcher, is that relatively healthy people are checking into hospitals for a routine surgery, and then developing sepsis or some other potentially deadly condition due to a lapse in control.